IMAGINABLE FUTURES: from science fiction to future Anthropocene (original) (raw)

# 1.1 Quality and pertinence of the project's research and innovation objectives (and the extent to which they are ambitious, and go beyond the state of the art) #@QUA-LIT-QL@# Due to multiple aspects, from climate change, space development, diminishment of resources, and overpopulation crisis, the future has become the most important time of the present. "The future starts now,' says Boaventura de Sousa Santos, 1 Coimbra's University Emeritus Professor. From science fiction to future technologies, humanity has been growing dependant on future scenarios. While some futures are based on algorithms, numbers and calculations 2 (European Commission Report, 2017), there are others, which depend on human imagination. The future is as "real" as the past, both residing in imagination; either remembered or as an anticipation of events (K. Lewin, 1936 3). Milojević; Inayatullah (2015) 4 post 4 types of future; predictive, interpretive, critical, and deconstructive. The symbolic constitution of the Future concerns not only how the Future is strategically built, but also how it is developed, grows and influences human imagination. Nowadays, much debate is devoted to Futures Studies from the quantitative perspective aiming to map the future and predict it. This research goes in a new direction, it will add by providing new cutting-edge knowledge combining phenomenology, science fiction and imaginable futures to understand the future that is imagined. Recent studies are gaining evidence in discussing the future within the phenomenological perspective 5 , 6 , 7 , 8. Nevertheless, the literature review demonstrated few studies 9 addressing Imaginable Futures within science fiction. Searching for the word "science fiction" at the York Library system (2022), there were 600.000 documents, however, as "science fiction, phenomenology," are searched, only 600 documents were listed. When "science fiction, phenomenology, future imagination" are searched, there are 7 works, and 2 somehow related to IMAFS: "Embodied artificial intelligence in science fiction," and "Three Emotional Stories: Reflections on Imagination, Narrative, and the Self 10 ." Alan Richardson (2015 11) explains that, this happens because science fiction and future imagination are mainly dissociated in Academic studies. Science fiction is studied in Literature Studies and future imagination in mind or cognitive studies. IMAFS will cover this gap. The concept of imagination is developed in philosophy by Husserl, 12 , 13 whose phenomenology relates it to an illusion, part of the phantasy and imaginary consciousness. 14 Other philosophers elaborated on the matter as stated by Warnock (2018 15), like Sartre's work on Imagination. In the literature review covering The Philosophical Papers 16 database, imagination is found in various contexts: Theories of Imagination (127 works), Imagination and Pretense (138), and Literary Imagination (186). This proposal departs from the science fiction literature, elaborates on imaginable futures within phenomenology, and investigates science fiction literature with the focus on Anthropocene. Fiction, in Latin, is 'fingere,' meaning to shape, invent, and make a pretense. From pure imagination to creative skills, the capacity to compose anew, inventing new realities with the use of science and technology in the literature world is called science fiction (Walsh, 2003) 17. Commonly disseminated through novels, short stories, movies, Pettersson (2018 18) points that these fictional worlds deeply influence reality, from future innovations to shaping human cognition. For example, many scientific discoveries were first described in fictional texts, and